Supernova about to give Earth a second sun.

I don't understand how they can say it could happen within weeks or a few millions years... can they not measure the distance from the star to earth
to know when the light will arrive? Or is it that they don't know how long the star will take to use up all its hydrogen?

The meaning that I took was the scientists did not know how long before it explodes. If they know the distance to the star they can calculate how long
it will take from the time it explodes until the time the light reaches us.

Originally posted by adigregorio
Betelgeuse is not in the belt, tis his shoulder.

That's probably my mistake, thank for the heads up.

Also, does is not take a bit of time for the light of the star to reach us? I always assumed it had went supernova ages ago, and we are just waiting
to see the fireworks.

(The second part, I am not sure about. The first part, I am super sure!

Yes it does take time for the light to reach us, so when we see it, it will literally be history. According to Wikipedia Betelgeuse is approximately
640 light years away, so when we see the explosion, it will have happened 640 years previously.

Before I found this thread I was researching prophecies of the Koran and the Hadith and I thought this might be of interest to some. There is a
prophecy that says when the sun rises from the west, judgement day is near.

Originally posted by LifeInDeath
There are some errors in that story. Betelgeuse is not the "second biggest star in the universe" - it's very, very large, a red super-giant, but
there are several much larger stars that we know of (and probably countless more
that we don't yet know about).

An interesting thing they don't mention in the article, which may or may not be related to the star's possible impending supernova, observations
over the past 15 years have shown that it has lost about 15% of its diameter in that time. This could just be some sort of natural "breathing" of
the star and not mean anything, or it could mean it's going through some early stage of the process of actually blowing up soon.

Originally posted by aboxoftrix
Before I found this thread I was researching prophecies of the Koran and the Hadith and I thought this might be of interest to some. There is a
prophecy that says when the sun rises from the west, judgement day is near.

Yes Endtimes , but not the end of the world .A new begining .This also ties into the official annoucement of ophiucus the 13th zodiac.Not that it is
new just being acknowledged .Watch this link and learn about carbon thirteen .www.youtube.com... and the effects of radiation
and DNA .

I have been telling people this for years.
But they don't seem to believe it. lol
Most of them anyway.

What's interesting..

Is it could have already gone supernova!

I think it takes about 640 years for light to reach earth, from Betelgeuse..
So,
The explosion could have happened before any of us were born!
We just wouldnt see it until the light from the explosion traveled for 640 years to our little eyes.

Betelgeuse could be nothing but a supernova right now!

edit: guess I should have read some more posts first!
I see now some of you are already on the ball!

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